I think Chris Garry raises an excellent point in another thread referencing the Harrison fight when he sais " It was a tough one for the judges though and with each round being scored strictly on its own merits it can leave a close fight not appearing so close, ie when 30-27 is scored in a fight where one guy slightly edges all three rounds."

I will break down the second round that I scored for Brunos fight as it differed to the other two judges. I'm proud of the fact that in a night with two extremely close fights Harrison and Carvahlo both decisions came back unanimous.

Now Cathal caught an early Bruno kick and pressed Bruno against the cage and landed repeated knees. I counted around 12-15 knees from Pendred with Bruno trying to reply maybe twice and making no effort to reverse the position. This lasted till about 1:30 of the round
The fighters are split up and the next 30 seconds is spent standing. Nothing of massive note lands from either guy but Pendred is the aggressor throwing a lot more strikes than Carvahlo eventually bull rushing him to the cage again, taking the action to 2:00

Pendred lands another inside knee and now begins to work for the take down. Pendred is pressing Bruno against the cage working for the takedown and doesn't secure it till 2:50
Bruno begins his guard attacks at around 3:15 of the round. Now Bruno from this point is dictating things he sinks in a triangle at 3:35. Pendred spends about 50 seconds in this position. Bruno is clearly winning this stage of the fight but how you score this is very difficult. He is controlling the fight and making effort to finish it but as anybody that has trained will know if you can sit in a triangle for 50 seconds without going unconscious it isn't completely on.
Now the dangerous armbar is attempted with about 30 seconds to go at one point this looks very very close however Pendred works out of it and the last ten seconds or so he seems content to stay there. At no point did he appear ready to tap, how close he was only Pendred will have known. Bruno's attacks from the bottom were impressive but the danger only appeared for Pendred with the last 1:30 of a 5 minute round. The rest of the round he dominated position and kept busier landing many more strikes and scoring a take down. You can easily break down the round and give it favour of Bruno im sure but just stating what I did on the night...

that is how I came to score the round for Pendred. Rounds 1 and 3 we all agreed on favour of Pendred. Thinking back to the fight I believe a trap that many watching at home may fall into is the time periods of rounds. A lot of Pendreds dominance was at the start of the round. For example when I was speaking to people after the fight many mentioned the hard leg kick that Bruno landed in the third that clearly hurt Pendred. Not one person referenced the right hand that Pendred threw which had Bruno's legs wobbling less than a minute earlier.....

All 3 judges have judged 100's of mma fights and came back with a unanimous decision for both those bouts. If both decisions swung the other way I think people would still be commenting that they felt it wasn't correct. You just have to score the fight as best you can while sticking to the criteria. No doubt in both cases you could probably use parts of the criteria to give opposite decisions but in this case 3 experienced officials came back unanimously in favour of Pendred and Seery

great show, cage warriors is the best in Europe when you are at that level you are going to get close fights.

Didn't managed to see the fights but looking forward to catching them soon! From what I can gather and have been told both Harrison vs. Seery and Pendred vs. Carvalho were extremely close - not everybody is going to like the outcomes in fights like those, but I'm currently seeing people backing both corners which shows how competitive they were. The judges are very experienced and know what they're doing though.

After watching the second round again, I have Bruno winning the round but understand Dave's points. Judging is a hard job, harder when people post fight people second guess your decisions. I should know this and keep my opinions to myself. x